But I still couldn't banish the image of the Quetzal Flower. In my mind, it merged with that of Priestess Eleuia: everything a man could desire or aspire to, a woman who would suck the marrow from your bones and still leave you smiling.
I threw the bloodied thorns on the floor, exasperated. I needed to focus on Neutemoc, not on a goddess I didn't worship.
Go bury yourself with the dead, Acatl, if you can't deal with what makes us alive.
I wasn't a coward. I'd made my choice, entered the priesthood of Mictlantecuhtli, but I hadn't been running away from the battlefield. I hadn't been running away from life.
The Southern Hummingbird strike Her. I wasn't a coward.
'Acatl-tzin?' The voice tore me from my nightmares.
Ichtaca. Good, reliable Ichtaca, his thoughtful face an anchor for my sanity. 'Yes?' I said, attempting to keep my voice from shaking.
If he heard it, he gave no sign of it, save for a slight tightening of his lips. 'You have a visitor. It's late at night, but given how urgent the matter sounded…'
I shook my head. Ixtli. It had to be Ixtli, with news of where the Jaguar Knight Mahuizoh was. 'No,' I said. 'Show them in.'
Ichtaca's lips pursed again. 'In here?' he said. His torch illuminated the whitewashed walls, the minimal furniture. 'As you wish.'
But the man who came behind Ichtaca wasn't who I'd hoped for, not at all.
'Acatl-tzin,' Teomitl said. He radiated untapped energy: the magical veil around him absorbing it, pulsing like a beating heart. 'I've done what you asked of me.'
I tried to remember what task I'd found for Teomitl. Something that would keep him busy, that would keep him away from me. Searching the girls' calmecac school, wasn't it?
'I see,' I said, trying not to let my disappointment show. Whatever Teomitl had found, it could have no bearing on the investigation.
'I was given something for you,' Teomitl said. 'By a young girl in one of the furthest courtyards.'
The young girl with the nahual, the one who saw far too much for someone so young. I hadn't imagined she would contact me again.
'She says she found it in the bushes near the centre of the courtyard. Probably shaken loose when the beast leapt over the wall.'
He was speaking too fast for me to follow: every word tumbled on top of the previous one, forming the basis of some arcane structure I couldn't comprehend. I raised a hand. 'Slow down, Teomitl. What did she find?'
Teomitl smiled, and held out his hand. 'This,' he said.
It was the missing pendant from Eleuia's room. As I'd suspected, it represented the warrior alone, an exquisite miniature of an Eagle Knight in full regalia. The stone was obsidian, though strangely enough, it didn't shine in the torchlight…
No! This wasn't obsidian.
I reached out for the pendant. 'May I?' I asked Teomitl.
He dropped it in my hand. 'It was meant for you.'
I rubbed my fingers on it, felt the familiar protective energy arc from the pendant to my heart, but far, far weaker.
Not obsidian. It was jade. Blackened jade.
And that in turn could only mean one thing: that I had been wrong. Only underworld magic could blacken jade so thoroughly.
EIGHT
'I don't understand,' Teomitl said, as I tied my cloak around my shoulders. 'What does it prove?'
It proved I had been mistaken. It proved Ceyaxochitl had been wrong. Incompetents. Accursed incompetents. No wonder we couldn't find a nahual. No wonder the beast had been able to leap over that wall: it had never been a jaguar.
I strode into the courtyard of my temple. A group of novice priests in grey cloaks, who had been talking among themselves, hurriedly walked out of my way. 'It proves we need to change what we're looking for.'
'It's not a nahual?'
I shook my head. To blacken jade… I wasn't sure, but it was probably a beast of shadows, summoned from the eighth level of the underworld.
Which meant two things: the first was that, since underworld magic was involved, I could track the beast after all. The second was that I didn't have to worry about the summoner: the underworld had its own justice. The Wind of Knives punished those who blurred the boundaries between the underworld and the Fifth World, and our summoner would soon find himself facing his own executioner.
All I had to do was find the beast and send it back to Mictlan. And rescue Eleuia. I was reasonably sure, though, that it was too late for the priestess. Whatever her abductor had wanted of her,
they had it by now.
But first, I wanted to ascertain something.
At the door of the girls' calmecac, the priestess who was standing guard looked at me questioningly. 'I have to check something in Priestess Eleuia's room.'
'At this hour of the night?'
'It's a matter of life and death,' I said. Behind me, Teomitl's footsteps slowed down. The priestess's gaze
